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him now was like talking person-to-person to Paul Robeson on Mars.
'Rimmer - what's happening?'
A two-minute pause, then:
'Donnnnnnnnnnnnnnn't knooooooooooooooooooow.'
'Something must be wrong with your signal from the ship. The remote
hologrammatic relay's not getting through properly.'
'Cannnnnnnnnnnnnnnn't unnnnnnnnnderstaaaaaaaaand wheeeeeeeeeeen
yoooooooooooooooou speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak sooooooooooooo
faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast.
Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaknorrrrrrrrrrmaaaaaaaaaaally,
liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.'
The conversation that followed was brief in content, but took the best part of
half a day to complete. The essence of the dialogue was that the signal from
the ship that projected Rimmer's image was slowing down and weakening. When
the signal became too faint to transmit, the hologrammatic projec-tion unit
would automatically flick from remote to local, and Rimmer would be
regenerated, fully functional, back on board
Red Dwarf.
'Well, that's good. You can find out what's keeping them; tell them where I
am.'
Rimmer nodded curtly. It took five minutes.
The transmission grew weaker. Interference lines split up Rimmer's image for
minutes on end.
'I'll beeeee baaaaack.' he said, over the course of the next half hour.
'Truuuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.'
Rimmer blipped off, and re-formed in the hologrammatic projection unit
regeneration chamber aboard
Red
Dwarf.
Instantly, he knew something was wrong. But not with him - with Time.
SEVEN
Lister had his first meal in four days, sixteen hours after Rimmer had
vanished.
He sat in front of the brazier, and looked down at the grey, chipped enamel of
the ship-issue plate.
The meal almost looked nice. It was garnished with potato crisps, topped by
crumbled water biscuits, sprinkled with mustard and decorated with
flower-twirls of Bonjella gum ointment.
But it was still dogfood.
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It was still rich, chunky lumps of rabbit, in a thick, mar-rowbone jelly.
It was still utterly revolting.
A dozen times he dug in his fork and held the quivering mass centimetres from
his lips, but he just couldn't bring himself to put it in his mouth and
swallow.
If it had had a neutral smell, it might have been all right. But the smell of
dogfood had always filled Lister with nausea. After disco urinals, his own
socks and Spanish perfume, it was his least favourite smell.
So he waited. He waited until he was so hungry he didn't care. Until the
dogfood wasn't dogfood. Until it was a prime slab of fillet steak sizzling in
a creamy fresh blue-cheese sauce.
With the pinched eyes of a gourmet sampling perfection he slid the wobbling
forkful between his lips. He chewed. He chewed a bit more. Then he swallowed
the dogfood.
He sat for a while.
Well, he thought, now I know why dogs lick their testicles. It's to get rid of
the taste of the food.
He placed the fork back on the plate, rose and staggered uneasily to the
Starbug's tail-section to try and take his mind off eating. He opened up the
locker that stored the
'bug's tiny library and tried to find some distraction. It was no good.
Everything reminded him of food.
He glanced down the spines. Charles Lamb. Sir Francis Bacon. And his eyes
started playing tricks: Herman Wok, he read, and
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinta. He saw food every-where, even when it wasn't
there. Eric Van Lustbader -
Eric Van - bread van, meat van:
food.
There was nothing else for it. He returned to the vessel's mid-section,
finished off the dogfood, curled up and fell happily asleep.
He awoke to the sound of creaking metal. Creaking metal and running water. He
unzipped his sleep bag. His clothes were wet. He was sweating.
There was a crash, and he was flung across the cabin. The
'bug was tilting. Cupboards and lockers hurled themselves open and disgorged
their contents over the warm metal deck. Lister clattered to his feet and
tried to scramble up the incline and into the cockpit, but the
'bug lurched again and sent him tumbling through the back hatchway and into
the tail section.
Then
Starbug started to move. Slowly at first, it slid lazily backwards, its outer
hull grinding against the landscape, fans and support legs bending and
snapping as it went. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]